


Look to the Stars (and Remember Me)

by ArtsyDeath



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bittersweet, Bonds Beyond Time, Canonical Character Death, Closure, Female Harry Potter, Gen, Not A Fix-It, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 02:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17737646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtsyDeath/pseuds/ArtsyDeath
Summary: The first time Sirius sees her she’s perched in the window at the north tower, feet dangling.She’s a scruffy thing, he decides, her hair wild and her knees bony. There’s a daring in the curve of her smile as she turns her head from the expanse of stars above her to look at him with eyes that are too knowing and too old for such a slip of a girl.-Or: Sirius learns to love Harry before she's even been born.





	Look to the Stars (and Remember Me)

The first time Sirius sees her she’s perched in the window at the north tower, feet dangling.

She’s a scruffy thing, he decides, her hair wild and her knees bony. There’s a daring in the curve of her smile as she turns her head from the expanse of stars above her to look at him with eyes that are too knowing and too old for such a slip of a girl.

He’s thirteen, he’s lonely, another fight with Regulus and more letters from his parents leaving him drained.

James tries to understand but his parents are happily married and the kind of folks that Sirius wishes would take him home and make him their own. Supportive, loving, their touches warm where they linger with gentle squeezes and hugs that leave him aching for more.

“Who are you?” he demands roughly, annoyed to find his hide-out occupied.

There are other towers but this one is _his_ and he’s mulish enough to push it.

“Who are you?” she parrots, eyes glittering. “A little puppy afoot?” Her smile stretches as his teeth gnashes and he notices that her eyes are as green as those of the redhead James’s been footing around recently.

“I asked you first,” he pushes.

She hums, looking unconcerned as she turns her attention back to the stars and something inside of him twists at being ignored.

“This is my tower!” He takes a step forward, hand curling around his wand. She’s older than him but he’s never seen her before and it annoys him because she’s clearly a Gryffindor by the scarf looped around her neck.

She doesn’t even turn her head.

“Go find your own!” he bites it out sharply and sparks explode from the tip of his wand, green, because it never _stops._

“Hogwarts belongs to everyone,” she hums. “Especially those just a bit lost and just a bit lonely.” She slots her eyes towards him when he folds down on the floor, drawing his knees to his chest and scowling.

“What do you know?” he asks, just a bit grumpy and just a bit bitter.

Her smile is, inexplicitly, fond.

“Maybe we’re two peas in a pod you and I." She laughs when he huffs and the sound makes him flush.

“Don’t make fun of me.” He clenches his fists in his pyjamas pants.

She opens her mouth but there’s a clatter behind him and he jerks around, scrambling instinctively to his feet and pressing the door shut and a murmured notice-me-not, heart beating too loud.

When he turns back she’s gone.

-

There’s no one in the Gryffindor tower that matches her description and he spends weeks watching the other tables without success.

His friends are looking at him with growing concern and he bites the inside of his cheeks and tells them he’s _fine_. That he’d been given a box of chocolates from someone in Hufflepuff but that it had been without name and he’d been curious.

He doesn’t like lying but he’s not about to tell them he hallucinates strange girls when stressed either.

-

The second time he sees her he’s sixteen and the anger is still coursing through his veins as he marches down the street with his trunk rolling behind him.

Accompanying the anger is fear and he gnashes his teeth together and tells himself to get it together before he sticks his wand out.

The Knight bus arrives with a sharp crack and he doesn’t bother with any words, just throws the money and hisses out the only destination that makes sense before he sinks down in the nearest seat and glares out the window.

He’s pale in the reflection, as if robbed off all colour, and his pupils are dilated.

He looks away, fists white-knuckled.

He steps off when it’s called and the bus disappears with another sharp pang, leaving him alone as snow slowly falls from above and covers the streets in a gentle layer of white.

It hits him then, what he’s done, and what it means for him.

He sinks down, burying his face in his trembling hands as he tells himself to _breathe_.

“This is a rather sad way to spend your Christmas.” The voice makes him jerk, scrambling back and drawing his wand.

For a flash of a second he thinks: _they sent Bellatrix after me._

It’s followed by terror and then anger and a gnarly sort of ache inside his chest that he’s not prepared to admit to.

But while the black hair is wild enough to match his cousin this person is eerily familiar and it clicks as to why when she turns the same kind of eyes that makes James flat-footed and short-tongued.

Her feet are as bare as the last time he’d seen her but instead of Gryffindor colours she’s wearing a plushy sort of green hand-knitted thing with a large H on the front of it over a knee-long dress. It’s an odd combination and he stares as she spreads her hands with a little hum and a little twirl, seemingly delighted as the snowflakes turns with her.

She doesn’t look a day older.

“You’re not real,” he blurts out.

The streets that had been empty doesn’t feel as haunting as she stops and turns, taking one, two, three steps towards him and reaching out with long fingers.

“So you say.” She does a little beckoning wiggle with her fingers. “Dance with me?”

He stares for a long moment before slowly putting his hand into hers, half-convinced she’ll turn to smoke, and then stumbles when she pulls him up, laughing as she steps back and pulls him with her.

He yelps as she twirls him into a low dip that makes his eyes too-wide and he twists out of her hold, stumbling back with his heart too loud.

The snow falls around them in the silence under the streetlights and her eyes gentles.

“Are you afraid?” she asks.

He stares at the snowflakes clinging in her hair and the colour in her cheeks from the cold. “I'm not afraid of anything,” he bites out, just a tad sharper than he means.

But then he thinks of Regulus betrayed look and his father’s disappointment and the sting in his cheek after his mother’s anger and the fight drains out of him, leaving him empty and regretful. 

“It’s not your fault,” he says gruffly. “I’m having a bad evening.” He tries for a charming grin but it feels flat.

“You don’t have to pretend.” She turns her head, looking to the stars just like she had then. He thinks that the snowflakes stuck in her hair looks rather like stars, too, and it makes her otherworldly where she stands so bare and unbothered, wind tugging at the skirt of her dress.

“Why are you here?” He doesn’t understand the look in her eyes when she looks towards him, just as old and young as he remembers her.

“Do you want me gone?” she asks.

His brow furrows and he steps forward, reaching out and catching her right in his left and tugging her towards him. Her chest pushes against his and their breaths mists the same air for a long moment.

They’re the same height, he realises with a start as he looks into her eyes. She looks more real this close, less like a hallucination, and her hand is chilly from the cold. He tightens his grip, curling his fingers around hers to warm them as he seeks for permission in unfathomable eyes.

Something about her softens and she pushes forward to lay her head against his chest, her ear angled as if to listen to the sound of his heart.

She hums as they twirl, soon pulling back to pull him into something freer and his cheeks burn as he follows, tripping over his own two feet to keep up with her.

Hours later he sinks down on the sidewalk, grinning wide enough to leave his cheeks aching for days afterwards.

But when he looks up she’s once again gone, as if stolen away by the night, and his grin falters and dies as he stares at his own twirling prints in the snow, bare of a matching set of prints.

-

James parents welcome him as their own and it’s everything he’s ever dreamed of.

It curbs the bitterness in his heart, makes it less sharp, less biting.

They talk about decorating his very own room and there’s turkey and cake and James’s hand curled around his under the table. _Brothers_ , he mouths, and Sirius remember the first taste of fire whisky under huddled blankets in their fourth year when life was as simple as gangly limbs and pimpled cheeks. 

Sirius knows there’s a war coming but for just that night he dreams of green eyes and snow and he’s wild and free and unburdened. She grins, warm and there and breathless as she clings to his arm and Lily is leaning on James, her eyes alight, and James’s nothing but fond.

He wakes to the sound of James snores and he smiles as he burrows deeper into the warmth of the bed and looks to the stars outside the large window.

-

He’s nineteen.

Peter and Remus is crooning off-key, arms thrown over each other’s shoulders and flat-foot drunk. The bride and groom had already spiralled away hours before and there’s only a handful left, mooching off the free-bar and last of the neat little sandwiches James insists were _necessary._

Lily had practically breezed through the wedding, calm and fond and amused as her husband-to-be flailed around the last-minute preparations until they managed to snare him in.

He’s drank his fair-share, too, but he’s more used to the burn and his steps are somewhat steady when he trades the tent for fresh air.

He brushes his magic against the restrictions meant to keep lost guests from getting even more lost and it unfolds for him with a yawn that swallows him up with a stumble as it snaps back in place behind him.

The garden in Potter Mansion is ridiculously large and there’s flowers blooming and curling everywhere, stretching out large and wild above, around and beneath him - magical in every sense.

He likes the ones that glow, especially the blue and the red. _Like ice and fire_ , he thinks, brushing his fingers over a petal three times the size of his palm and watches as it folds in with a little shudder, ticklish.

He finds her crouching by the garden lake.

The dark water is lapping at her feet on the little sandbank she’d found and the end of her dress is wet.

“I saw you at the wedding.”

She doesn’t look towards him.

“I don’t remember seeing you on the guest list.”

She doesn’t respond.

He sighs and folds down in the grass. He pulls a bottle of wine from the inner pocket of his jacket, magically expanded for just this task, and then two metal mugs because carrying those thin little champagne flutes around felt like a bit over-the-top.

She hasn’t aged a day.

He thinks that, maybe they match now.

Not quite twenty either of them.

There’s a noise when he pops the cork and he sees her tense momentarily beneath the thin cloth that covers her back. He pours hers first as she rises.

For a moment her eyes are dark, distant and burdened as she looks at him.

But then it melts, leaving something tired even as she smiles at him and takes the place beside him when he pats at the grass.

She takes the mug when he holds it out for her with a little shake and she sips it slowly.

It’s a spicy sort of wine, warm, leaves a pleasant lingering taste in his mouth when he lowers it.

“I should have brought cheese,” she says, finally.

“I meant to steal a salami with me,” he admits. “But Remus got a bit twitchy when he saw me with it half-way down the suit pocket.” The corner of her mouth lifts. “Tried to play it off as a bathroom snack and he got all huffy about it.” He takes another slow sip, savouring it along with the stretch of a small smile.

“It’s good,” she tells him.

She looks to the stars and he looks with her and they drink their wine.

The mug clatters to the ground when she disappears and he pockets it without a word, lingering until the sun rises.

-

He becomes a godfather at twenty-one.

The bundle in Lily’s arms is so small, its tiny fists flat against her chest as it feeds hungrily from her breast. He feels wide-eyed, clumsy and too young as Lily smiles at him from the bed with both exhaustion and pride.

James is snoring on a chair from hours of being too wound up. Sirius suspects he went complete knock-out the moment the babe let out its first scream and the amusement in Lily’s eyes is very telling when she glances at her husband.

He takes the empty seat on the other side of the bed, for once loss for words.

“Do you want to be the first to hold her?” she asks him when the tiny bundle is done drinking its fill and Lily has managed to wrap it up in a gathering of soft yellow blankets.

“Shouldn’t James-“ But Lily is already leaning over and Sirius stills as she guides the small thing into his arms, showing him how to support the head with deft hands and then drawing back with a tired but mischievous glint.

Panic courses through him and he’s so still that he hardly dares to draw a breath.

He struggles to relax as it gurgles, a tiny fist freed from the blankets and flexing as its brow scrunches. He stares down at it – at the downy black curls already visible on the small head. It’s all scrunched up with flecks of blood still visible by the ear which he wipes away carefully with the sleeve of his shirt.

“What’s her name?” he whispers.

But she’s already snoring along with her husband and Sirius is left alone with the most precious thing in the entire world in a silent hospital room.

It makes a muffled little noise and he draws it against his chest, feeling its heat against his pounding heart, and it presses its ear against him as if to listen to the sound as it snuffles.

He hums the melody of the girl from the stars as it gums his shirt.

-

He’s twenty-two.

James and Lily are dead.

The street is blown apart around him, bits and pieces from the muggles caught in the explosion strewn around him and he can’t stop laughing because he knows that if he stops he’s going to cry and it’ll make it all real **and he can’t** \--

-

He turns thirty-one in Azkaban.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever feel warm again and the day is nothing but another tally mark on the wall.

His breath mists and the blanket barely covers him where he lies on the wooden bench in prison garbs that hasn’t been dry from day one. He listens to the screams and mad ravings of the other prisoners, the pleading and sobs which mingles into a never-ending loop of background noise.

He misses the silence.

He slips into his second form when the dementors make their rounds and watches with dull dog eyes when they glide by, stealing happiness with rattling breaths from empty gaping mouths.

It’s becoming harder and harder not to remain as a dog, where memories are muted and he’s warmer. But it’s a dangerous line of thought and knows that happens to people who chose another form and becomes it so he forces himself into a long-limbered and too-thin shape with a shiver.

A hand dips into his knotted hair, nails scraping against his scalp and he forgets how to _breathe_.

The silence curls around them both.

She slides onto the bench, nudging him and then curling around him. Her left hand settles over his heart, their legs tangling, and her chest presses against his back as she works her fingers through his hair with gentle tugs.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “It’s not long now.” Fingers stroking locks of black hair from his face. “She needs you. You’ll be her world. Even if it’s only for a little bit of time.”

He doesn’t open his eyes.

Not even when her lips presses against the corner of his mouth before she tucks her head against his back and holds him until she fades away for the last time with a a lingering promise brushed against his ear.

-

Sirius is thirty-two-years-old when he understands.

She’s young – far younger than he’s ever seen her. Just thirteen - alone and frustrated and scared as she hurries down the street, away from her family, a woman floating away in the distance.

There’s nothing whimsical about her and she doesn’t stop to look at the stars.

-

Sirius knows from the moment he meets his goddaughter that their time is limited.

He offers her what the Potters had given to him, a _home_ , but he’s not a free man and he’s left frustrated and useless in the house that he’d escaped as a teenager.

She turns up his doorstep, fifteen-years-old, and he doesn’t know what to expect for there is anger in her eyes, helplessness and frustration as well, but she doesn’t hesitate to throw her arms around him, head angling to rest against his chest in a way that echoes familiar with what she will become.

“I missed you,” she whispers desperately.

“And I you,” he confesses into her ear.

-

“It’s a bit ironic, isn’t it?” Harry asks him at Christmas, peering out the window and into the night.

Below them the Weasley’s are celebrating Arthur’s return home from the hospital, the laughter and warmth from the close-knit family apparent even through the closed door.

“What is?” he asks, rolling to his side to peer at her from his bed, head in the palm of his hand.

“You’re named for the Dog Star and your animagus form is a dog.” She turns towards him, the light from the moon catching in Lily’s eyes. “What if you’d been a cat?”

“What are you really thinking about, Prongslet?” he asks.

She glances up once more to the stars outside the window before turning towards him. “He nearly died. If it wasn’t for my vision-“ But she can’t finish, biting down on her lip. “What if I’m too late next time, Sirius? Dumbledore wants me to close the connection but if I can save lives…”

“It’s not a one-way connection,” he reminds her. “If you can reach him there’s only a matter of time before he figures out how to reach you.” He thinks that Lily and James would both be proud of him for that advice even if it feels clumsy on his tongue.

He sees the doubt in her eyes, a familiar sort of stubbornness in the twist of her lips.

“Come here.” He opens his arms and her eyes meet his, wide and startled.

She threads towards him on bare feet, unsure and awkward as she bends forward, as if to wrap her arms around his neck, and he reaches out with a leg to sweep her into the bed with a yelp as she tumbles upon him.

He descends on her immediately, unwilling laughter bubbling desperately from her mouth as he tickles her until she’s practically crying, shaking and begging for mercy until he relents and flops back down with a grin. “You’re so bad.” She slaps his chest, but it’s weak, her head angled to peer down on him. “What did you do that for?”

“You’re twice as stubborn as either of your parents.” He pokes her belly and she grasps at his hand to prevent him from doing it again. “It’s not your responsibility to carry the world on your shoulders.” A pause. “We should really find you a hobby,” he says musingly.

She flops down beside him, her head landing on his arm.

“You should teach me to become an animagus. Maybe _I’ll_ become a cat.”

“Maybe a kitten if you’re really lucky,” he teases her. “And then we’ll find you a star right next to mine.”

-

The last time he sees her he’s thirty-six.

He meets her eyes as he stumbles back, air stolen from his chest, mind shutting down as the veil embraces and pulls him back.

She’s right beside his goddaughter, the skirt of her dress brushing her knees, knitted sweater long enough to fall over her fingers.

Harry is screaming, Moony’s arms wrapped around her waist, and he remembers the words whispered to him in a cell.

_She’ll kill him for you._

“I love you,” he gasps to them both.

**Author's Note:**

> Theirs are a bittersweet fate, but perhaps there's meaning in that too.


End file.
